Why is Rand Paul the only US Senator who has the guts to tell the truth about what’s happening to Syria’s ancient Christian community, the oldest in the world?Is he the only Christian in the Senate? Is he the only member of Congress who is thinking about them? From the AP story he tweets:

The dawn assault on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula was carried out by rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, according to a Syrian government official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group.

At the start of the attack, an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the village, said the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists.

The suicide attack was followed by fighting between the rebels and regime forces, the Observatory and a nun in the village said. Eventually, the rebels seized the checkpoint, disabled two tanks and an armored personnel carrier and killed eight regime soldiers in fighting, the British-based group said.

The nun said the rebels took over the Safir hotel atop a mountain overlooking the village and fired shells at it from there. “It’s a war. It has been going from 6 a.m. in the morning,” she said.

Some 80 people from the village took refuge in the convent, which houses 13 nuns and 27 orphans, she said.

Nuns and orphans. If the president and a majority of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — Sen. Paul voted “no” — have their way, American cruise missiles will be aiding and abetting the forces attacking nuns and orphans in Syria. No getting around that, no matter what John McCain says.

True, we will in theory be harming the forces that gassed innocents near Damascus. I do not favor the US helping Assad or hurting him. I favor us staying out. We don’t know who the worst people in this civil war are. It is incredible that more American Christians don’t know, or don’t care, about the fate of their fellow Christians in Syria, and how our country — and our tax dollars — may soon be used to exterminate them. If you didn’t read the religion scholar Philip Jenkins’s essay on TAC today, you must. Excerpt:

To describe the Ba’athist state’s tolerance is not, of course, to justify its brutality, or its involvement in state-sanctioned crime and international terrorism. But for all that, it has sustained a genuine refuge for religious minorities, of a kind that has been snuffed out elsewhere in the region. Although many Syrian Christians favor democratic reforms, they know all too well that a successful revolution would almost certainly put in place a rigidly Islamist or Salafist regime that would abruptly end the era of tolerant diversity. Already, Christians have suffered terrible persecution in rebel-controlled areas, with countless reports of murder, rape, and extortion.

Under its new Sunni rulers, minorities would likely face a fate like that in neighboring Iraq, where the Christian share of population fell from 8 percent in the 1980s to perhaps 1 percent today. In Iraq, though, persecuted believers had a place to which they could escape, namely Syria. Where would Syrian refugees go?

A month ago, that question was moot, as the Assad government was gaining the upper hand over the rebels. At worst, it seemed, the regime could hold on to a rump state in Syria’s west, a refuge for Alawites, Christians, and others. And then came the alleged gas attack, and the overheated U.S. response.

So here is the nightmare. If the U.S., France, and some miscellaneous allies strike at the regime, they could conceivably so weaken it that it would collapse. Out of the ruins would emerge a radically anti-Western regime, which would kill or expel several million Christians and Alawites. This would be a political, religious, and humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled since the Armenian genocide almost exactly a century ago.

Nightmare indeed. If you are a Christian, why don’t you care? And if you do care, have you spoken to your pastor, your friends, and most importantly, your Congressman and Senators, about it? Rand Paul gets it. Do you?

67 Responses to The Coming Genocide of Syria’s Christians

It would seem that the Administration has decided that pitching in with Al Qaeda is better than supporting Hezbollah, Assad’s partner of the moment. History will likely place this decision alongside President Bush’s decision to attack Iraq as two contenders for worst decision of the century.

“I want Assad to win. … And the Globalists don’t care about the Christians in Syria because they are all anti-Christian to the core.”

Assad’s forces have, up to now, killed between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians. I would suggest – I might well be wrong on this – that those (“the Globalists” – whatever that means) who think that perhaps Assad should ease up on killing civilian Syrians are not quite saying that because of some sort of anti-Christian animus. I would, however, venture to guess that a binary comment like this – “I like a dictator with 70,000 Christian and Muslim lives on his hands to win, because I am concerned about what might otherwise happen to Christians” – is not likely to win many friends for the Christians in question.

[NFR: The idea that one’s Christianity requires one to take up arms in a foreign country on behalf of Christians there or stand revealed as a weak Christian is dangerous and bizarre. — RD]

While I agree with you in many ways, once upon a time, Christians did do that very thing (if not for fellow Christians, it was because the clerics told them to). I think we would both agree that those were far more “Christian” times, weren’t they?

Somehow or another, whatever it is that Christians are doing today about Syria, it seems pusillanimous compared to historical precedents.

Couldn’t they at least go there and bear witness or somesuch? That would possibly result in them dying en masse, not that I recommend that, but it would be a powerful symbol of their faith and belief, a very powerful symbol indeed. That would send a message to people and if enough blood was spilled or a great enough number showed up, would not be ignored. Christians need not take up arms to be effective and be in solidarity.

My government is keeping track of mere dozens of individuals who went to Syria to fight. Would they ignore hundreds or thousands who went to bear witness, if not fight, on behalf of their beliefs especially if they died? I rather doubt it, though you may not for reasons that you better appreciate than I.

I checked several sources, including CNN and that number you’re using is wrong. The TOTAL number of casualties in the war is between 70 to 100,000. That number includes civilians and combatants. While it is impossible to have exact numbers, it appears that the rebels and the Assad forces have taken about the same number of casualties and while civilian deaths are occurring in the thousands the majority of death by a very large number are amongst combatants.

The “who did the gassing” question is not yet answered. It might never be.
The pro-war faction has already made up their mind: it is Assad’s regime who did it.
We all remember so well Collin Powel flanked by George Tenet assuring us that Sadam Hussein has WMDs.
They had information from “classified reliable sources”.
What happened to the Christian minority from Irak after we deposed the secular dictator?
It is easy to assume a similar fate for the Syrian Christians if we help the “democratic” oposition and push him out.
A fate which would be shared by other minorities: Allawites, Druze, other Shia – if Assad goes.
At the same time, I cannot see why regular Sunni Muslims would like us more if we attack Assad who is still a Muslim.
Just wondering how difficult it is to learn from previous mistakes.

Even going so far as to admit that we, as Christians, can especially mourn a massacre of our fellow believers, I still fail to see why we should expect our government to have a special obligation to protect Christians qua Christians. Many people in the United States have a special concern for Middle Eastern Christians, maybe even a majority, but the state does not. How, and this is not a rhetorical question but a genuine one, would that be any different from getting especially worked up because the US government isn’t intervening in a given conflict despite the disproportionate number of white victims?

To the idea that the administration is more willing to protect Assad’s Muslim victims, the response is consistent with long-standing US foreign policy priorities against the use of a WMD regardless of the population upon which it was used. Without defending that particular priority or the proposed US response, that’s not the same thing as the US springing to the defense of Muslims and ignoring Christians.

I think there’s a case to be made that elite opinion in this country is more sensitive to the suffering of designated victim groups (Muslims) and unwilling to see Christians anywhere as anything but the entrenched establishment, but that isn’t the same as explaining US government priorities, and it does not legitimize our calls to use the instruments of policy to protect Christians solely because, by G-d, they’re Christians.

If you were really unaware that rather a lot of people support Assad, then you’re even stupider than you seem. And if you can’t bear hearing people express opinions about Syria that you disagree with, then just go off and hang out in your playpen while mature adults discuss the situation.

Of course Rod is particularly concerned with the fate of Syrian Christians. You might have missed this, but he’s an Orthodox Christian, as are they.

Don’t be ridiculous. You could just as easily say “the rebels’ desire to gain power has cost over 100,000 lives.”

Not quite Hector. Assad had his troops gun down peaceful unarmed mass protests. That’s how we got to the stage where there was armed resistance to Assad’s armies.

Now its true that the hosts of peaceful protesters could have said, “Oh gee, the regime is willing to kill as many of us as necessary to hold onto power. Maybe we should just go home and live with Assad and his cronies running the country awhile longer. After all, if it comes to armed resistance, a bunch of foreign jihadis funded by Qatar are going to be the only ones who know how to handle guns and engage in military maneuvers, and they would quickly come to dominate the battle.”

But few human beings on the face of the earth are quite so prescient, especially in the face of indisputable tyranny. I mean, we were taking a considerable risk in turning to the French monarchy to help us win our republican independence from a parliamentary constitutional monarchy.